For years now I’ve blogged about a Right-wing movement in the US I’ve called “the Great Neocrusade.” It’s a modern incarnation of the medieval Crusade, during which western European Christians ventured to the Levant in an effort to drive Muslims out, under the principle that their presence there was an affront to their Jesus which couldn’t be tolerated. (At least, that’s what the Crusade became. Its origin was in Pope Urban’s approval for Latin Christians venturing east to assist the Byzantines, but that scenario didn’t last long and the Crusaders embarked on their own mission, distinct from Byzantium’s, soon after their arrival. And about a century after the Crusades’ launch it would become a campaign against Byzantium itself).

As it stands within the American Right, the Neocrusade is an effort to drive Islam from the new Christian “holy land.” Neocrusaders are predominantly Christians — most of them being of the evangelical Protestant sort — but there are some Jews who’re part of the movement too. Their effort is predicated ostensibly on the threat posed by Islamist terror, which to be sure is horrific and should be fought using every means at our disposal to do so. That said, the Neocrusaders’ main contention — i.e. that Islam is inherently violent and all Muslims therefore are potential terrorists — is quite simply not true. What’s really going on is that these folk view Islam as the chief rival of their own religion, are incensed that it exists at all, and want to get rid of it in order to show the power of their own faith. All the crap about terrorism is mere pretense. That’s not to say Islamist terror isn’t real — just that they know better than to stomp around claiming every Muslim is a terrorist; they just say that in order to rationalize what they’re doing.

For the most part this Neocrusade manifests itself in the form of rhetoric and occasionally votes (such as outlawing “shari’a law” even though it’s not now, nor will it ever become, the law of the land in the US).

A Tennessee man, who made a failed bid for Congress last year as an independent with extreme right wing beliefs, has admitted in federal court to planning an attack on a Muslim community in New York.

Robert Doggart, 63, was recorded on a wiretapped phone talking about his plan to travel along with members of a private militia to an area near Hancock, New York, known as Islamberg, to burn down a mosque, school and cafeteria, while gunning down anyone from the community who tried to stop them.

“Our small group will soon be faced with the fight of our lives. We will offer those lives as collateral to prove our commitment to our God,” Doggart said in a Facebook post, according to court documents. “We shall be Warriors who will inflict horrible numbers of casualties upon the enemies of our Nation and World Peace.”

Doggart was arrested April 10 by the FBI on charges that he solicited others to violate civil rights, attempted to damage religious property because of the religious character of the property and made threats through interstate communication.

Two weeks later, Doggart pleaded guilty to interstate communication of threats. A judge has not yet signed off on the plea agreement. He was released on $30,000 bond to home confinement after the agreement was made and faces between 0 and 5 years in federal prison, along with a possible fine of up to $250,000.

The Heavy article describes Doggart’s plot in detail and includes court documentation of the case as well as of Doggart’s background. There’s a lot of detail there and I can’t hope to do any of it justice; I’ll just suggest you check out the article and find out what happened.

There are two things about this case I find disappointing: First, the judge has let Doggart out on bond, in spite of the fact that he’d admitted, in court, to having planned a terror attack. That decision is mind-blowing. Had Doggart been, instead, a Muslim who’d admitted involvement in a terror attack, there’s no fucking way he’d be free right now. Second, the mass media haven’t picked up this story, not even (to my knowledge) news outlets local to Hancock NY or southeastern Tennessee. I hadn’t heard of Heavy.Com before finding this story, and ordinarily wouldn’t have used them as a source for a blog post, but primary-source material is included, so the report is substantive. The other outlets mentioning this are all Left-wing in nature.

Maybe all the good ol’ boys back in Tennessee would prefer not to mention this, so that might explain why Doggart’s local media are running silent, but I can’t imagine how or why the New York state or eastern Pennsylvania media don’t consider this news (Hancock is in Delaware county, abutting the Pennsylvania state line). Unless this story turns out to be untrue — which I admit is possible, but given the evidence contained in the story it seems extremely unlikely — the media are doing a disservice to ignore it as they are. Perhaps they’ll finally pick up the story … I certainly hope so. The reality of Christianism in the US is that it definitely is capable of terrorism, and this is one example of it (albeit one that was nipped in the bud). There have been other Christian terror attacks, such as the rampage in Austin TX last December by a member of the Phineas Priesthood (cached).

Note: I have some additional news on this item; please see below for more information.

There are times when one can only be dumbfounded by the kind of idiocy and lunacy that people spew when they’re defending and/or promoting their religionism. It’s natural this can happen, because religions — all of which are forms of metaphysics — are inherently unsupportable using objective and rational standards. By definition, then, only standards that are subjective and irrational can fit the bill. It’s the irrationality that often gets out of hand.

Dr. Tony Evans, the first African American to earn a doctorate in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, chided black Americans recently for not taking responsibility for the breakdown of their families, declaring that “the white man is not making you do that.” He also charged that black families were a lot stronger and made more progress during slavery.

“The biggest problem in black America today is the breakdown of the family…the breakdown of the family is unraveling us as a community. When 70 percent plus of your children are being born out of wedlock and the fathers are not there to tend to them, you’ve got chaos in the community. That’s crime, that’s unemployment and most of these kids are going to be raised in poverty. And that’s something we control,” explained Evans.

He then made the reference to slavery to highlight the dire condition of the black family.

“The White man is not making you do that. He’s not forcing you into that position. That’s a convenient out. In slavery when we did not have laws on our side, the community on our side, the government on our side, the broader community on our side, our families were a lot stronger. We were a lot more unified and we made a lot more progress. We’re going through regression right now and a lot of that is because of decision-making we are responsible for,” said Evans.

As the article notes, is African-American himself, making this all the more astoundingly asinine. I have no idea where this clown learned his history, but slaves’ families weren’t really very stable or “unified”; their owners could buy and sell them freely. Parents and children were often separated, and for the most part, slaves weren’t allowed to marry, at least not in a full legal sense, so “spouses” could easily end up separated, too. “Unified”? That’s just a flat-out lie.

Now, as insane as Evans’s laughable spew sounds, it’s not really his own invention. The Religious Right has been kicking around the idea that America’s southern slaves lived paradisiacal lives with strong nuclear families for years. In fact, I found an article in the New York Times back in 2011 which addressed this very notion (cached). In spite of how counterfactual it is, though, this idea persists. It’s all part of the Right’s obsession with rolling the clock back, even to times in which customs now considered heinous were the norm. They just can’t handle modernity and want to destroy it, so they whip up their own false versions of history to justify how great things were back then. This is a recipe for delusion, of course, but none of them realize it, nor do they care to hear they’re wrong (because telling them they’re wrong, means you want to kill them or something).

If you needed any more help understanding how and why the Religious Right is downright fucking insane, the idea that African-Americans were better off as slaves ought to help make that crystal clear.

Update:This morning in my email I received this from Steve Yount of A. Larry Ross Communications:

A Statement by Dr. Tony EvansSenior Pastor of Oak Cliff Bible FellowshipFounder and President of The Urban AlternativeMay 9, 2015

“Slavery was ungodly, unrighteous and unbiblical. During slavery, the family was broken up by force by unspeakable atrocities even though African-Americans struggled to preserve it.

“To offer clarity on both my intention and meaning, the black population was largely unified in fighting against the breakup of the family being forced on them due to the evil system of slavery. Black unity was a powerful force, to the greatest degree possible within the limitations of slavery, in seeking to keep the family intact.

“My comparison to today is that we have lost some of our unity and the shared goal of keeping our family units together, and we are often making choices that are dismantling our own families and also hurting our own communities. We do not want to do to ourselves voluntarily what slavery did by force (i.e., destroy our families).

“I have always and will always stand on behalf of justice, and do not condone oppression in any form. I condemn racism on all levels, whether personal or systemic. I am saddened that my remarks were removed from the context of my entire discussion.”

This response sounds all well and good, but it doesn’t address Evans’s chief original contention that African Americans had been better off as slaves than they are now. I still submit that trope — which, as I pointed out, is not Evans’s own invention, being a rather common notion among the Right — remains absolutely not true. Even if Evans disapproves of African Americans “destroy[ing] their families” “voluntarily” rather than “by force,” and even if one assumes this is precisely what’s happening to them, there’s still a fundamental difference between then and now: Neither the slaves’ owners nor government can do so “by force,” at the moment.

On Sunday, she was in the news again for sponsoring a “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Tex., some 20 miles from Dallas, after which two suspects opened fire on a security guard before being shot and killed by police. Authorities did not immediately link the exhibit and the shootings, but Geller did, with vehemence.

At any rate, this event was clearly a trap that Ms Geller laid down for Muslims, and two of them tromped right into it. She can now trumpet to the universe about how she was right about Muslims, that they’re all dangerous fanatics, and that their religion must be outlawed.

As insanely counterfactual and delusional as she is — especially her paranoid conspiracy theory about some nefarious groups trying to “Islamicize” the country — the truth is that Ms Geller didn’t do anything wrong in this case. The US is a free country with free speech, and if people want to depict Muhammad in artwork, they can! It’s fine for Muslims to believe such depictions are forbidden. If it makes them feel better never to depict their prophet, more power to them! But … it is most certainly not rational of them to expect non-Muslims to obey that precept of Islam. Non-Muslims are never under any obligation to obey any aspect of Islam. They have no reason to do so, since they aren’t Muslims.

That simple statement seems so obvious that it almost doesn’t need to be said, but apparently, it does … because a lot of Muslims seem not to be aware of it.

The effect of this attack on other Muslims also seem obvious. What Simpson and Soofi did makes their religion look bad. As CNN mentioned, one local imam even admitted as much:

Shortly after the Sunday night shooting, a prominent Muslim leader in Dallas said tweeted that the incident was “just what we didn’t want.”

“The community stayed away from event,” wrote Imam Zia Sheikh. “Seems like a lone wolf type of attack. Just what we didn’t want.”

I’m sure they’ll do all they can to disavow these two, and insist their actions shouldn’t reflect poorly on Islam as a religion. The problem, of course, is that … well, it does, even if they’d prefer it didn’t.

My advice to them is the same advice I’ve given to American Christians who tell me the antics of militant Christianists shouldn’t reflect poorly on them, and that is: It’s your religion. You picked it. It belongs to you. If your co-believers are making your faith — and, in turn, you — look bad, then get off your asses and do something about it! Sniff out the extremists in your midst (after all, who else could recognize them as such?). Rein them in. Correct them. Discipline them. Control them. Stop them. Do whatever you must, in order to whip them into line.

Because after all, if you don’t respect your own religion enough to police it, you can’t rationally expect outside observers to respect it, too, or respect you for following it!

It would behoove Muslims who dislike these sorts of things to pay attention to what’s called the Streisand effect and not let their righteous indignation get so far out of control that it actually calls attention to things they’d rather no one ever saw. If they’d just calm down and shut up about Muhammad drawings, people might stop drawing him.

GOP Senator, presidential candidate, and all-around wingnut crank Ted Cruz is not happy. Like most militant Religious Rightists, he thinks “Christians” (which he defines as “politically-conservative Christians who happen to agree with him on most facets of Christianity”) are under attack. As though someone or something is trying to wipe them out entirely. He keeps referring to an ongoing religious war as though it were real — even though it’s not. This weekend, The Hill reports, he took to the podium to condemn this persecution (WebCite cached article):

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday said Democrats had gone to extremes in their persecution of Christians.

“Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” he said at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in Waukee, Iowa.

“There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate continued.…

“Today’s Democratic Party has become so radicalized for legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states that there is no longer any room for religious liberty,” he said.

The Texas lawmaker said this stance was against America’s traditional values. Religious liberty, Cruz claimed, was one of the nation’s founding principles.

“We were founded by men and women fleeing religious persecution,” Cruz declared.

As do many Religious Rightists, Teddy confuses “loss of ability to control people’s lives and freely harass anyone they dislike” with “persecution.” They aren’t the same thing … but they neither can nor will comprehend it.

Second, he implies Christians aren’t allowed in the Democratic Party. I hate to break it to Teddy, but that’s not true; there are Christians in the Democratic Party. I happen to know some. He may not like that fact, and he may blithely dismiss such people as “not ‘Real’ Christians™,” but they really do exist nonetheless.

As for the Faith and Freedom Coalition whom Teddy addressed, as a militant Christianist outfit, its name is a misnomer. It doesn’t actually support “freedom.” Instead, it promotes authoritarianism … specifically, Christianist authoritarianism, with them in charge, and no “freedom” granted to anyone except those who think and believe as they do.

Teddy also claims that states allowing gay marriage harms “religious liberty.” Well, that’s kind of funny, because, as it turns out, there are churches which now allow gay marriage which would be prevented from doing so, if Teddy were to get his way and it were outlawed once more. He doesn’t appear to mind taking away their “religious liberty,” even while screeching and wailing that his own is being taken away from him (the poor little thing). This, Dear Reader, is what’s known as hypocrisy — something Teddy’s own Jesus clearly and unambiguously forbid him ever to engage in, but which he seems to think is just fine.

Perhaps the one thing Teddy is right about is that religious liberty is one of the country’s founding principles. It found its way into the Bill of Rights. However, nothing about that principle, or the way in which it’s applied legally, entitles little Teddy and his fellow Rightists to outlaw things for everyone merely because their metaphysics frowns on it. Consider the implications of Teddy’s version of “religious liberty”: Should Orthodox Jews, for example, be able to outlaw pork and shellfish, merely because it’s against their faith to touch or ingest them? As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s precisely the sort of logic Teddy and his militant Christianist colleagues promote.

Finally, while Teddy may condemn what he calls “liberal fascism,” he ought to look a little closer to home before bewailing “fascism” in others. His father, Rafael Cruz, is a preacher who — as is made clear within his own recorded teachings — is a committed Dominionist/Christian Reconstructionist. If you’re not sure what those are, you’re not alone. They’re extreme religious and political philosophies which advocate the abolition of the federal government and the transformation of the states into Christian theocracies. It’s a kind of ardent Christian collective nationalism, and as such has a lot in common with fascism. So I’m not sure little Teddy is standing on any kind of moral high-ground, therefore, when he argues against what he perceives as “fascism” in others.

For those who think it’s not fair to visit “the sins of the father” (i.e. preacher Rafael) on the son (i.e. Senator Teddy), keep in mind two things: First, such assessments have a clear scriptural basis; there are a number of Old Testament verses in which YHWH proclaims he’ll punish children for their parents’ transgressions, sometimes “to the fourth generation” (see e.g. Ex 20:5, 34:7; Num 14:18; & Dt 5:9). It doesn’t seem wrong to hold the Biblical-literalist Cruzes to such standards. Second, Rafael has acted as a surrogate for his son, delivering speeches supporting him, and this appears to be ongoing (cached). If the father campaigns for the son, then the son — for better or worse! — “owns” what the father preaches. Period.

At any rate, as I’ve blogged so many times before, it’s long past time for these whining crybabies to grow the fuck up, stop pitching fits because they’re being thwarted in their wish to force everyone to live by their own metaphysics, and start acting like the grown adults they are. Little Teddy Cruz lied when he said Christians aren’t permitted in the Democratic Party. Christians like him, i.e. militant conservative Christianists, may not want to join it, but there are plenty of other types of Christians who might. This places him in my “lying liars for Jesus” club, where he’ll find himself in good company, I’m sure.

It’s no secret that the Fox News network is a leading bastion of Religious Right ideology. Pretty much every big name on the network is a committed Christianist to one degree or another. Oddly enough, in spite of the fact that the Religious Right movement for which this channel works is a product of Protestant evangelical Christianity, many of the channel’s biggest names — e.g. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — are Roman Catholic. Of course, the rivalry between these wings of Christianity hasn’t gotten in the way of these folk marching in lock-step with their Protestant brethren and sistren. It’s surprising how few differences there are among them, even if historically Catholics and Protestants had been known togo to war with each other.

Catholic priest and Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris argued over the weekend that atheists were not suitable candidates for president because it was “hard to trust” someone who did not believe that God would punish them.…

According to Morris, anything that did not “inform” a public official’s life was not faith “because faith is a set of beliefs.”

“It’s a belief in God, it’s a belief that there are eternal consequences for your actions,” he explained. “And I think that a leader that doesn’t have that — a set of core beliefs that help him to make justice an important part of his life and his decisions because he knows that there are eternal consequences, well, it’s somebody that it’s hard to trust.”

This might seem a reasonable conclusion to Christofascists like Morris and the rest of the insane crew he works with at Fox. But if one thinks about it, it doesn’t really work. I’d much rather have as president someone who can figure out right and wrong on his/her own, and who has both the ability and willingness to do the right thing of his/her own accord, without having to be frightened into it by threat of punishment imposed by some wild-eyed cosmic sky-tyrant. An upstanding, effective leader should not need metaphysical beliefs to drill morals and ethics into him/her.

But then, I’m just a cynical, cold-hearted, godless agnostic heathen, so what the hell could I possibly know about such important things?

Now, my mention of Morris’s order’s sordid past might seem inappropriate … as though I’m smearing him for the misdeeds of others. Perhaps I am. To be clear, I’m not saying Morris must have been involved in any shenanigans. But I’d like to point out that, for several years, he was on the staff of the order’s seminary in Rome. He very likely had direct access to the order’s leadership, some of whom the Vatican has investigated. What does that mean for Fr Jonathan? I have no idea … but that’s the problem. The Legion of Christ remains under a cloud of suspicion — a cloud that the R.C. Church itself created, on its own.

Bill O’Reilly is one of those sanctimoniously-outraged Religious Right nutbags who, sometimes, I think can’t possibly actually believe the lunacy, stupidity, and childishness he spews. Every year, for example, he blusters and fumes about a putative “war on Christmas” that he claims exists, but which most certainly is not happening — no matter how often he or any other furious Christianist insists otherwise. I fail to see how someone could actually believe there truly is an effort underway to outlaw Christmas in the US.

Self-avowed “secularist” John Stossel challenged Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday, arguing that the Factor host was overstating his allegations that Christianity was under attack in the U.S.

“Your ‘war on Christianity,’ you’re just a 10-foot-tall crybaby,” Stossel told O’Reilly. “It’s not so bad. Christians aren’t being killed.”

In case you find it difficult to believe a grown adult could reel out something this asinine, here’s video of their exchange, courtesy of Media Matters:

Now, I’m not precisely a fan of Stossel. He’s far too close to the Teabaggers for my taste. Yeah, he was once a talented investigative reporter for ABC News, but that was long ago; since then he’s made himself into a corporatist shill. Even so, I appreciate that he stood up for secularism and was willing to call his own colleague on the carpet for his religionist lies. So thanks, Mr Stossel!

It’s true that Christians are, in fact, being persecuted in other parts of the world, which makes it all the more obscene that the Billster would dare equate their tribulations — which are very real, to the point of sometimes being lethal — with US Christians merely feeling “persecuted” because they’re not always obeyed, by claiming American Christians are being “verbally killed.”

I mean, seriously … “verbally killed”? Really, Bill!?

As for “respect,” that’s a two-way street. It can’t be demanded of someone — not any more, anyway. These aren’t ancient or medieval times when monarchs would order people hacked to death for failing to kneel quickly enough before them. Christians have no right to stomp around and dole out orders with the expectation those orders will automatically be obeyed out of “respect” which they think is owed them by virtue of their beliefs. To presume so is childish and needs to fucking stop already.

As I’ve mentioned many times previously, I understand what’s happening here. I get why Billy-boy wants to think he’s being persecuted for Jesus. It’s because a desire to be martyred is embedded deep within the psychopathology of his religion. He and his fellow Christianists really and truly can’t help themselves. They want to feel persecuted, so in the US, which is majority-Christian and therefore there is no persecution of Christians, he and they are required to invent it. The problem comes about when they try to impose their self-delusion on other people and punish them for something they haven’t done. It just doesn’t work, because rational thinkers know this delusional thinking for what it is, and don’t subscribe to it. The Billster and other Christianists can stamp and fume and screech and holler until they’re blue in the face, but no amount of them claiming to be persecuted can ever make them actually persecuted.

Honestly, it’s long past time for the Billster and his fellow Christofascists to fucking grow the hell up already and start living in the real world … in which “respect” is earned, not demanded or coerced.

American Neocrusaders continue to obsess over the idea that what they call “shari’a law” will be imposed on the US in the very near future. Toward that end, they repeatedly contrive all sorts of maneuvers they think will protect them from Islamic law’s relentless creep into American life. That they don’t even know what shari’a is, that it’s not uniformly recognized by all Muslims, or that no religion’s law-code can ever be forced on Americans against their will, isn’t enough to dissuade them. They’ve gone as far as to enact state constitutional amendments forbidding it, which is every bit as ridiculous and extreme as it sounds.

A bill that would have helped Idaho track and enforce child support payments stalled Friday in the House Judiciary and Rules Committee over concerns that it would allow Sharia law into the U.S. Court system.

Senate Bill 1067 [cached] would have brought Idaho up to date with federal regulations, allowing the Gem State to use the government’s system for tracking and enforcing child support payments.

The Christianists’ objection has something to do with the fact that this bill would align Idaho with federal law, which recognizes the Hague Conventions, to which the US is a party. This, apparently, is the mechanism by which “shari’a law” would be imposed on Idaho:

Amendments to the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act include agreements with the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Family Maintenance, which has among its members Muslim-majority countries such as Bosnia and Albania.

That was enough for [GOP state Rep. Sheryl] Nuxoll and others to see an inroad for Sharia law into Idaho’s justice system.

Quoted by the Associated Press [cached], Nuxoll told House committee members, “There is no specific language in the bill that would protect the rights of those dealing with parentage, child support and support orders from a foreign country that would contradict our laws here. There are other countries listed in the treaty—France, Belgium— that have recognized Sharia courts as quasi-courts. So I just feel that you should be aware of those facts.”

The problem with the failure of this bill is that the state of Idaho will remain hamstrung in its efforts to recover back child support from delinquent parents. All because a bunch of delusional Christofascist wingnuts think passing it will lead to shari’a law in Idaho. What a fucking joke. Well done, Christianists! You must be so proud of yourselves! You protected your state from an affliction that can never come its way. My hat’s off to all of you for that major accomplishment.